


Blaze of Glory

by Lunaraen



Category: MCSM, Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: Angst, Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:56:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: Everyone dies.No matter what else changes, what does or doesn't happen, death is a constant.





	Blaze of Glory

Everyone dies.

No matter what else changes, what does or doesn't happen, death is a constant.

It may not be permanent in some cases, but it is constant nonetheless.

In the case of the Blaze Rods, they have just as many possible deaths as anyone else, just as many near deaths and temporary ones as there are permanent deaths. Just as many possible lives too, new paths and possibilities springing up from every moment and every decision.

There are realities where they've never even met, ones where they never will and ones where they're bound to run into each other sooner or later.

There are, of course, realities in which they die in prison, where they die before other opportunities ever become available.

And on the other hand, there are countless realities where even after trying to destroy Sky City, they manage to be happy, manage to work hard to change and in some cases gain forgiveness. There are realities where they never set foot in Sky City, never bothered with rumors of portals and Eversources.

Even when so much has been set in stone, has happened and can't be taken back, there are so many variables and other branching possibilities.

* * *

There is one such reality where Maya is one of the most respected people in Sky City, along with her best friends, for all they know and all they're willing to share, a reality where this world is far kinder and better than the one they left behind.

In another, she and Gill manage to convince Aiden to not target the new Order, convince him that they don’t need Lukas to be happy and that they can live fine without him and without being eaten up by anger, a world where they manage to set up shops in the new city's market and are more than happy to welcome Lukas back with open arms and brush off the misunderstandings and confusion.

There's one where Maya and Gill managed to work long enough to be able to build themselves a house of their own despite their time in prison, one where both of them working full time in the mines barely gets them enough money for dinner on a good day.

There aren't many other jobs open to them, as known ex-criminals and would be murderers aren't often in high demand. There is one job though, one that even years later struggles to find willing recruits. Dealing with monsters is usually a deal breaker for most otherwise interested people, but that's not a problem for Maya.

The real problem is getting Reginald, or anyone, to let her join the guard.

But they need people, and her record's been clean ever since she was let out of jail. She's been nothing but obedient, and while she hates that people still think of her and Gill as Aiden's mindless lackeys, it's because they think she's dumb enough to follow orders without a problem while being competent enough to do so that she gets the job.

More importantly, she gets the pay.

It's not fair that Gill doesn't, the whole reason he's not allowed to be part of the guard being his size and the fear of what he'll do if they actually give him weapons, but at least one of them gets the job. She forces herself to look on the bright side.

The worst that comes out of the deal is what helped her get the job at all, and it's that there's no secret that she will always be the first one to take care of any and all monster patrols, and especially the occasional raids that plague them ever few weeks.

After all, while the usual monsters are bad enough, it's not uncommon for nastier monsters to swim, fall, or fly down from the still burning ruins of Sky City, the wreckage they thrive in and the monsters themselves both Maya's fault. Despite no one being able to go up there, it's thought that the monsters have managed to build nests and breed, hence why they never stop coming.

And one day, a day where in innumerable realities she's never heard of Sky City and in countless more she's only ever heard of it from Lukas, Maya finds herself stuck with a choice.

She's the one outside the walls, the alarm has been sounded, and she knows it will take several minutes for any other guards to reach her position. That's several minutes the city doesn't have, given the approaching wall of creatures.

The walls are made of stone, the doors iron, because they have learned. While blazes and ghasts can fly, the doors opening or the walls burning down would allow a sea of zombies and skeletons to follow in their wake.

The walls may not be able to burn now, but the doors aren't locked, and that's what keeps Maya from running inside the city and preparing defenses. While the doors may be heavy, heavy enough that Maya would struggle to get in even if she started shoving and pushing now, there are far more monsters closing in on them than there are guards ready behind the walls. It wouldn't take more than some nudging and pushing from the horde to open the doors wide enough for the monsters to flood the city, and with their numbers they would do it in a fraction of the time they have that Maya doesn’t.

And while the doors can be locked from the outside, they cannot be unlocked.

It's a choice where, in this path, her only concern is how quickly she can lock it.

The answer is just enough time, and only barely at that, before the first fireball hits her square in the back. The next shots are just as hot and just as accurate.

Maya burns fighting for the people she tried to kill years ago.

* * *

There's a reality where Gill isn't mourning. On the same day in a different reality, he feels like the luckiest and happiest guy alive, so much so that he half expects to burst from how ridiculously happy he is.

There's another reality where his days are still spent surrounded by his best friends, even if the roles are a little different and they aren't so biting towards other people while they get ready for their next performance.

In another, he's sick of reporters that exist in a city that's larger than it looks.

(But then he would know. There are various realities where he helped build the city, and this is one of them.)

He gets sympathy that's about as deep as a puddle, dramatics and flair that help his temper about as much as the people who still badmouth Maya, as he's pretty much told how awful he must feel, how terrible knowing Maya died for people who have never been supportive or tolerant of her must be.

It's the one place they're right.

Then he's told it must be nothing compared to the shame he's been carrying all this time, the shame from being duped and being a good friend to a psycho who never deserved his loyalty.

And that's where they're so very wrong.

Because as much as he regrets it, as much as he wishes it didn't happen, Gill's not going to lie and pin more blame on Aiden. He and Maya were just as happy to destroy a city full of innocent people. They were sick and twisted and deserved to be put behind bars. Then they built the city and shared everything they knew with the people and were treated like violent animals.

That's something they didn't deserve as much, and definitely not after Maya had managed to become a guard.

And when he finishes shopping for food one day, feeling dead and hollow and not caring that he’s got enough food for two people, he doesn't think twice about attacking the two criminals holding another shopper at knife point.

It feels good, to knock them out cold.

The knife in his thigh doesn't feel as good, and he doesn't feel like the hero the woman he saved insists he is.

He ignores her questions, her concern, not looking back as he limps home. He collapses on the floor, knife still sticking out of his leg, as soon as the door shuts behind him.

He's left bleeding on the floor of his empty home, and won't be taken to the infirmary he's proclaimed dead in until an hour later.

People, who, thanks to the claims of one grateful woman, can't comfortably demonize him too much, will say he really died of a broken heart, that the wound wasn't bad enough to kill him on its own, that it was only a matter of time before grief claimed him anyway.

All Gill knows, as the room fades to black and his breathing slows, is that he misses his best friends.

* * *

There is a reality where Aiden is the only one to starve in prison, a reality where his death is enough to get Maya and Gill pulled out of prison and back to their world.

In another, he's responsible for raising a villager child whose home blazes destroyed, and in most similar realities, he doesn't have to do it alone.

In yet another, he is alone, surrounded by stories that he knows by heart and has written in a million different ways. It's a messy hovel of a shack, the carpet hard to see under the paper, but it’s as well-made as anything else Aiden ever built.

Years of being alone haven't made him a worse builder.

It’s a shack he's abandoning, one on the edge of the forest that almost no one goes into and is far enough out of sight that no one ever finds the building, along with all the writings. He remembers the stories better than he remembers his old life, sometimes.

It's a choice he's making that's been a long time coming, only now set off by what could've gone very differently.

Little more than a month ago, during one of his rare trips into the city for supplies, he'd run into Lukas.

Lukas, who never visited this world after Sky City burned, who Aiden was convinced would never set foot here again.

(But could have at any time, and did in numerous other paths, most times to confront his guilt and anger and a few rare times to get rid of Aiden entirely.

There are many realities where he visits just to show his best friends the cool city in the sky.)

In another reality, Lukas recognizes the scruffy miner hesitantly asking for an autograph.

In this one, he barely pauses, finishing one autograph and moving to the next, finishing Aiden's like it's nothing and with a look in his eyes that makes it clear that Aiden's just another fan he doesn't know and probably won't see again.

That's why Aiden's leaving.

And he's not just leaving this forest for another one. He knows there's a portal in the city, and he's going through it to another world.

Not the one he comes from of course, because no thank you, but he knows there are more on the other side. Any and all of them would do at this point, really.

He feels guilty, because of course he does. Two weeks ago, he was woken by a scream, shrill and harsh and one that made it sound like someone was dying in a way that shouldn't have been familiar at all.

When he looked, though, Aiden could only see a sea of monsters being successfully held off by the city's ever improving walls. The scream may've never happened, another part of a quickly forgotten nightmare, or it may've only been from some terrified person on the inside.

He can't let his guilt keep him here because he can do nothing but watch anyway, and they always seem to have it under control as it is.

He's not as sure about Maya and Gill because how can he be?

He hopes they're okay. He's sure they are. Him being gone hopefully helped at least a little to erase their perceived ties with him, and they're both resourceful.

He wants to go and get them, wants to get them to come with him and selfishly drag them away from their lives yet again, but they've been given enough time to settle. Part of the reason he's leaving is so he can stop trying to fix what can never be fixed. It's for the better, he tells himself. He's sure they've both been doing more than fine without him, and that they'll continue to do just as well. It's not like they'll know he's gone, after all.

(And there are countless other lives, other realities, where he never left, where the three of them decided to stick together, whether it was on their own in the wild or in the city or in another world entirely, but this is not one of those realities.)

Getting into the city isn't as hard as he maybe made himself think it would be, and it occurs to him only as he sneaks past a patrol that most people in the city probably don't know about where the portal really is. He's at least narrowed it down to where it has to be, but the fact that sneaking through Isa and Milo's headquarters has been this easy puts back on any edge the lack of trouble takes off.

But every guard walks right by him as he hides, skin and bones and dull patchy clothes that blend right into the background, and it's only because of his guilt that he stops at all.

He thinks he hears either Maya or Gill's name, maybe both, being mentioned by a guard as two stroll by, and for a moment he hesitates.

He can't stop, though, not if he doesn't want to land in prison. Just because the average person, or the man who used to be his best friend, doesn't recognize him anymore doesn't mean a guard won't.

The portal is unguarded and the most beautiful thing he thinks he's ever seen, shimmering and humming and alive with promises that he’s more than happy to hear and see to. Slipping through it, as icy and weird as it feels and as long as it's been since he's gone through a portal, is as easy as breathing.

And when he does, Aiden ceases to exist as more than a character, two dimensional and used only in stories to illustrate how downtrodden and overlooked the heroes were in the beginning. It's not that he never hears the name again, often all but spat from his own mouth when he gets dramatic or drawled when it better fits the scene to mock the character, but that's all Aiden is. A minor villain no one asks about after the story is done.

The man who tells the stories is a person, real and flesh, if one not many understand or want to try and figure out. His stories are good, and most swear they're true, and that's all they ask.

To some, he is simply the traveler, the man who always manages to entertain the curious and lonely, the man who manages to excite and enthrall those who want adventures of their own. Others know him as the storyteller, the mysterious man who knows so much about the heroes whose stories he never runs out of and characters he seems to share no connection to, the narrator.


End file.
